Last Chance for Pumpkins

Here's your nightly math! Just 5 quick minutes of number fun for kids and parents at home. Read a cool fun fact, followed by math riddles at different levels so everyone can jump in. Your kids will love you for it.

Last Chance for Pumpkins

November is coming to an end and fall is about to turn into winter, at least for people living on the north half of our planet. So what do you do with all those leftover pumpkins? You can make breads, pies, and soup with the fleshy part, but you’re still left with those giant gobs of goopy seeds inside. The good news is, you can turn that goop into a tasty, crunchy snack: roasted pumpkin seeds. How? Rinse them under running water to rub off all the stringy fibers. Once the seeds are dry, have a grown-up heat the oven to 400 degrees, and spread the seeds on a lightly greased baking sheet. Bake them for 15 minutes, then sprinkle them with whatever seasonings you like: salt, sugar, cinnamon, chili powder, a squirt of lime. Then you just have to decide what to do with the rest of that 80-pound pumpkin.

Wee ones: If you sprinkle a pumpkin seed with salt, then the next with sugar, then the 3rd with cinnamon, then start over with salt, then sugar, then cinnamon, then salt…what’s next?

Little kids: If you scoop out 8 slippery pumpkin seeds but 3 of them squirt onto the floor, how many are left in your hand? Bonus: If you have 3 big pumpkins and each one has 200 seeds inside, how many seeds do you have for roasting?

Big kids: If you start roasting your seeds at 3:20 for 15 minutes, at what time do they finish? Bonus: If you want to roast 300 seeds and every pumpkin has 80 seeds, at least how many pumpkins will you need to scoop enough seeds?

Answers:Wee ones: Sugar.

Little kids: 5 seeds. Bonus: 600 seeds.

Big kids: At 3:35. Bonus: 4 pumpkins, since the first 3 will give you only 240 seeds.

About the Author

Laura Bilodeau Overdeck is founder and president of Bedtime Math Foundation. Her goal is to make math as playful for kids as it was for her when she was a child. Her mom had Laura baking before she could walk, and her dad had her using power tools at a very unsafe age, measuring lengths, widths and angles in the process. Armed with this early love of numbers, Laura went on to get a BA in astrophysics from Princeton University, and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business; she continues to star-gaze today. Laura’s other interests include her three lively children, chocolate, extreme vehicles, and Lego Mindstorms.